Saturday, 31 May 2008

Openings go in and out of fashion, often for no other reason than they are simply regarded as "unfashionable". When Kasparov revived the Scotch Game at the highest level as an alternative to the Ruy Lopez, I remembered a quote by Svetozar Gligoric in his book on the 1972 Fischer v Spassky World Championship Match

By his magic wand he [Fischer] transformed the Sicilian Defence into an endgame of the Scotch Opening! Spassky could not believe his eyes when he realised what trap he had fallen into, applying an opening he never intended, even in a dream.

When I first read this words in the early 80's I thought is was pretty harsh, given that Gligoric never explained why an ending from the Scotch was such a bad idea.Of course these days Grandmasters are a little more pragmatic, realising that the openings themselves may not be bad, as long as they are in the right hands. For example, when Alexander Morozevich burst on to the international scene with his 9.5/10 at the 1994 Lloyds Bank tournament, his choice of openings caused much debate. Probably the one game that caused commentators to exclaim "Hey, you can't do that!" was his round 5 win over English GM Mark Hebden.

Friday, 30 May 2008

A heads up for the 2008 ANU Chess Festival. The main event, the 2008 ANU Open, will be on the the 26th & 27th of July at Fenner Hall, Northbourne Ave, Braddon ACT. The structure will be the same as last year (Open and U/1600), with no increase in entry fees either. The prize pool is still a generous $3000+ with $1000 first prize in the Open.Last years event saw 1 GM, 4 IM's, 2 WIM's, and a couple of FM's in the 26 player Open, and I suspect this year's event will be at least as strong. Indeed given the fabulous time everyone had at this years Doeberl Cup, I suspect a lot of players are planning a return visit to the nations capital.I will post a link to the brochure an entry forms when they become available.

Thursday, 29 May 2008

Looking for another way of publicising your chess club? Google Maps allows you to enter new locations into their map system. So simply locate your chess club premises on the map, then choose the "Add a place to the map option". Fill in the required details (Name etc) and after about 10 minutes is should be searchable by the rest of the world. You can even add extra details in the "Review" section.Already a number of Australian chess clubs and businesses are doing this. To see which ones, just go to Google Maps and search on "Chess Club". To see stuff that I've added recently, you can even search for "Street Chess".This way prospective new members can find a local club quickly and easily.

Congratulations to Emma Guo, the winner of the 2008 ACT Women's and Girls Championship tournament. Emma scored 6.5/7, dropping the half point when she took a bye to play in a soccer game. Second place was last years champion Alana Chibnall (6/7). Jenny Mason was the best scoring non-junior player (4.5/7).It was pleasing to see that the event attracted a sizable field (approx 30 players). The other thing that pleased me was that the information for this report came straight from the pages of The Canberra Times (and not the chess column either!). Well done to everyone involved in the organisation of the tournament.

Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Depending on the size of the event at my local club, I sometimes take on the role of the "houseman". The houseman is a fill in player when there are an odd number of players, meaning that no one misses a game. Of cause it often means I do not know whether I am playing in a round or not, and sometimes I even begin a couple of different games, abandoning them when a latecomer arrives a few minutes after they begin.I had just such an experience this evening, and it turned into a very fortunate one for me. Having done a head count and draw at 7:45pm I was in the draw, and playing Mark Scully. The game was a Budapest Gambit, and I was very surprised by his 4th move. At first glance it just dropped a piece, but as I began to think about what was wrong with the obvious 5.Qd5 an extra player walked in. The game was stopped (as Mark was aware of the arrangement), but before I got up I asked him what would happen if I played 5.Qd5. "Ah" he said, "this". (I've added some analysis to the proposed line showing that it might not have been so clear cut, although whether I would have found it during the game is an unanswered question)

Tuesday, 27 May 2008

While looking at one of the blogs I read daily I cam across a nifty site called Walkscore. Based on information from Google Maps, it calculates a "walkability" score for an address or location. This score is based upon walking distance to such services as grocery stores, cinemas, bars etc Simply type in your address and see how good your location is for walking to amenities.If you live in Canberra (like me), you will quickly see that we are not a walking city (at least in the suburbs). My current home has a walkscore of 11 (out of 100), but at least that is an improvement on where I lived as a kid, which has a score of 6. Even where I work (which is pretty close to the centre of town) only manages a score of 56. Of course when looking at these scores be aware of the GIGO principle (ie Garbage in, Garbage out). The result is only as good as the data used to calculate it.Although to add some perspective, the area where teams will be staying for the 2008 Chess Olympiad has a score of 54, while Bled, Slovenia scored 0 (although this is clearly due to incomplete information)

Monday, 26 May 2008

By now many of you would have seen the video of the US Women's Championship playoff (if not it is here). For the moment I want to go past the question of how to resign, or the suitability of the tie break method and focus on the mechanics of the game.Clearly it got down who could play the fastest moves, rather than who could play the best moves. Now while this might be good for those looking for evidence that chess is a physical sport after all, it does move away from the previous position that chess is about ideas.So two suggestions to bring reduce the reliance on physical dexterity, and return such playoffs to a battle of brains. Firstly, sleeveless tops, so the players aren't worried about cuffs getting the way. Secondly, and more importantly, dispense with the chessboard altogether.Instead simply have a voice operated input system, where the players announce the moves which are then automatically played on a computer screen. This way it isn't the fastest mover who wins, although it may be the fastest talker. Also a player will have to wait until their opponent has completed a move before playing there's, rather than the 'move anticipation' visible in the video. Of course the players may have to separated so that player A doesn't shout out a blunder for player B, but that is why we have arbiters.As for the technology to do this, it is pretty simple. Probably no more than a couple of hours of programming to put it into action.

Sunday, 25 May 2008

For the 2000 Chess Olympiad in Istanbul it was a common joke to say that watching "Midnight Express" was part of your preparation. For the 2006 Olympiad in Turin, Italy, seeing the original "The Italian Job" was a useful way of familiarising yourself with the sights of the city (including the famous roof top race track which was located next to the playing hall). But try as I might, I haven't been able to find much in the way of cinematic brilliance coming from Dresden, Germany.Once you exclude various dramatisations of World War II bombings, and German TV Police dramas, the best I can find is a couple of ordinary sequels to better known originals. The only two movies I've vaguely heard of are "Go Trabi Go 2" and "Leningrad Cowboys meet Moses". The first is obviously a sequel to "Go Trabi Go", while the second was a follow up to "Leningrad Cowboys go America". And I'm pretty sure neither movie will be much of a guide to Dresden, just as I'm pretty sure I won't find either of them in my local video store either.But of course I could be missing the obvious (I once asked on live radio why there were no songs sung about Las Vegas), so if I am, feel free to suggest the definitive Dresden film.

Saturday, 24 May 2008

I had a dream the other night. In it I was paired against Viswanathan Anand in the 3rd round of an important knockout event. (Don't ask me how I made it to round 3 as I didn't dream this bit).My major problem in the dream was what to play against 1.e4 While I was furiously trying to do some prep, Anand was amusing himself by giving pre-game interviews to the media. In the end I decided he would play the Ruy Lopez and I would try the Marshall. But figuring he knew everything there was to know, I'd try the Steiner Variation. This consists of 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.c3 d5 9.exd5 e4?! (D)

But having decided that I then began to worry that he might choose the Ponziani (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3) just to confuse me.Unfortunately I can't tell you the result of the game, as in all dreams of this sort I realised I wasn't wearing any trousers and while franticly searching for them my hotel room in the minutes before the start of the game, I woke up.

Friday, 23 May 2008

Lycra clad women, swinging from gymnastics rings, high above a cheering audience is, "like a game of chess. You have to be one move ahead of your opponent". At least that's what a commentator on Gladiators told me the other night.

Thursday, 22 May 2008

A press release from FIDE landed in my inbox the other day, reminding me of the 2008 Mind Sports Games. This event, to be held in Beijing, is an international games involving Chess, Bridge, Draughts, Go, and Xiangqi (Chinese Chess).Reading between the lines (and doing a bit of research on the web), it seems some international federations are giving it a big push while others (eg chess), are not quite sure what to do. On the one hand the press release indicates that FIDE regard this as an important event, but the press release reveals that maybe the national chess federations haven't embraced it with similar enthusiasm.However, it seems that the organisers are making a big effort to make it a success. Apart from free accommodation, they are also providing free air travel 'from' Air China Hubs. Unfortunately they don't say where these hubs are (and it would be a pointless offer if the hub was in say, Beijing), so I've sent an email off to organisers asking for clarification.Nonetheless, despite my hope that such an event is both succesful and repeated, there seems to be two possible impediments. Firstly the website is big on PR and very very small on detail (ie I can't find a calendar of events, or even the dates of the Games), and secondly, with its proximity to the Dresden Olympiad, a lot of players would be unable to take the time playing in both events, leaving a second string field for Beijing.

Wednesday, 21 May 2008

While there are plenty of nice ways to checkmate an opponent, my choice for the ultimate mate is by castling. I'm usually impressed when I can simply castle with check, so to castle with checkmate would cap a pretty memorable game. At this stage of my career I haven't been able to do so, and given the scarcity of examples in my database (10 games out of 2.5 million), I would be surprised if I am able to do it even once.So I am reduced to enjoying examples of other players performing the feat, as in this game from the 1968 Olympiad.

Tuesday, 20 May 2008

A collection of opposition groups to the Russian Government held its first meeting of an alternative "National Assembly" on Saturday. One of the leading figures in the "Other Russia" group is former World Champion Gary Kasparov. The meeting didn't get of to an auspicious start as it was delayed an hour due to late arrival of Kasparov himself, leading me to wonder if the Russian Government can now claim a forfeit.But the most outrageous stunt at the meeting came from a pro-government protest group. As reported in the Moscow Times "A couple of pro-Kremlin Young Russia activists added to the commotion at the event by launching plastic phallus on propellers, which were knocked out of the air by security guards."There is video of this device on the net already, but as this is a family blog, I'll leave it to you to track it down.

Monday, 19 May 2008

After starting with 5/5 Vassily Ivanchuk completed a dominant victory in the Mtel Masters, scoring more 4 draws before winning his final game against Ivan Cheparinov. His final score of 8/10 left him a point and a half ahead of Veselin Topalov, and a tournament performance rating of 2977.Probably the other surprise tournament performance was by Lev Aronian (spotted recently visiting the Australian National University), who finished in a tie for last place on 3/10 .Here is the final win for Ivanchuk, holding off a determined, but ultimately unsound attack from Cheparinov.

Sunday, 18 May 2008

Congratulations to the White Rose Team which has won promotion to Division 1 for next years 4 Nations Chess League (in the UK). The Yorkshire based team (hence the name) is managed by my PNG Olympiad team mate Rupert Jones. They lead division 2 from Day 1, and despite a hiccup on the final weekend against Pride & Prejudice, won the division by 2 clear points (Match points were the scoring system).Here is a game from one of the lower boards which saw a very early Bc4 against the Sicilian, and ended with a very early mate.

Saturday, 17 May 2008

As I was in a post below, this evening (or today UK time) the FA Cup Final is on. Often in previous years the Orange Open Chess Tournament would be held on the same weekend, and it was often a battle between getting rest before the Sunday rounds, or staying awake to watch the action.As the team I support in English Football (Torquay United) has never progressed beyond the 4th round, I really don't much invested in the result, although I guess I'll go for the underdogs(?) in Cardiff City.But to return to the heading of this post, I was impressed with Torquay's end to their season. Having been relegated to Conference Football at the end of last season, they looked like bouncing straight back to League Football, as they lead the Conference for much of the season. They fell away at the end but were still in the playoffs for the second promotion spot. Their semi-final opponents were arch rivals Exeter and they started with a 2-1 away win in the first leg. Back at home they were leading 1-0 (3-1 on aggregate) with 70m already played. And then they allowed Exeter to score 4 goals in the last 20 minutes to go down 5-3.A truly brilliant effort.

Friday, 16 May 2008

When I first was getting serious about chess, I used to hang out at the Woden Library in Canberra, looking through their chess section. One of the titles that stood out was The Golden Dozen by Irving Chernev. Why this stood out wasn't the quality of the book but what I thought was the difficulty/audacity of compiling and publishing such a list.The book was published in 1976 (although the last game in it was played in 1971), and the top 12 players (according to Chernev) were

Capablanca

Alekhine

Lasker

Fischer

Botvinnik

Petrosian

Tal

Smyslov

Spassky

Bronstein

Rubenstein

Nimzovitch

An interesting list, and one I think that some people have objected to over the years. I recall the suggestion that Chernev's hero worship of Capablanca resulted in his No 1 ranking, and almost as a flow on effect, Alekhine at No. 2.Of course a modern list would have to include Kasparov in the top 2 or 3, and Fischer's legend has grown since the original publication of the book. In fact most people I've discussed this topic with seem to think a top 4 of Alekhine, Capablanca, Fischer, Kasparov (although not in that order) seems to pick itself, with various choices for player 5. Karpov is often overlooked in this debate, while positional players all seem to plump for Botvinnik. However I'm inclined to give Chernev his due in one regard, and make Lasker my choice for no 5 in the list of "5 Greatest Chess Players".Without running a full blown poll, feel free to add your own lists in the comment section.

Thursday, 15 May 2008

A big plug for the Mingara Open, which is taking place this weekend (17th&18th May) at the Mingara Recreation Club, at Tumbi Umbi, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.Having looked at the information sheet I'm impressed by the prizes offered. Due to the sponsorship of the Mingara Recreation Club and Australian Commercial Kitchens (courtesy of Keith Hogan), the tournament is offering a prize pool of $2000, based on only 30 entries. With an entry fee of only $40 ($30 concession) you can see that prizes paid out are going to exceed entries paid in. Hopefully the tournament will attract far more than just 30 players, as the event offers generous divisional prizes ($200,$100,50).The other interesting idea is a top 4 play-off at the end of the final round. The top 4 players will play a knockout for an additional $500, with winner getting $250. While this is sometimes done in the United States as a way of splitting ties, in this case it is an opportunity for a player who had an unlucky loss (or didn't get to play the winner due to the pairings) to have a chance a picking up some extra coin. And for the spectators/other participants it provides some entertainment while waiting for prize money to be organised etc. If the idea turns out to be succesful it may be worth tryin at other events in the near future.

Wednesday, 14 May 2008

I had hoped to talk about this tournament before now, but I found it difficult for two reasons. Firstly, it seemed to have the longest lead in time of any tournament I can recall (Day 1 Marching Bands, Day 2 Exhibition Match, Day 3 Drawing of lots etc etc), and secondly, the website was hard to find. (It is here btw).But the big talking point is Ivanchuk's 5/5 start to the event. By beating every other participant he has a performance rating of about 8000, and the big question is whether he can repeat the run in the second half of the tournament. Despite his big lead, Ivanchuck is certainly aware of Topalov's come from behind victories in previous editions of this event, although if he can win like this, then first place is assured.

Tuesday, 13 May 2008

The May 2008 issue of Australian Correspondence Chess Quarterly should be turning up in your mailbox today or tomorrow (for those that subscribe). Apart from the latest games from the Australian CC scene, there is an interesting letter from one of readers that challenges the accepted wisdom that Fischer was "the greatest chess player that ever lived". The correspondent (Michael Bedelph) ends his letter with the following paragraph

"Perhaps the underlying reason why Fischer chose not to defend his title was because he knew that Karpov would defeat him and there is no denying that, in 1975, Karpov was the stronger player"

I'm not taking a position for or against this claim and instead (like most magazine editors) would be interested in the views of others.

(Disclaimer: I am the editor of the Australian Correspondence Chess Quarterly, and while I receive no financial renumeration for this role it would be nice if more people subscribed. I've even placed buttons on the right of the screen to make it easier)

Monday, 12 May 2008

A number of years ago I saw a cartoon in Chess Monthly which basically claimed "Chess is ultimately unsatisfying. My losses confirm my shortcomings as a player, while my wins only occur due to mistakes by my opponent". Now while many would object to such a bleak world view, it does raise the question of what are the causes of your victories.The diagrammed position is from a game I played recently. At this stage of the game I was pretty pleased, as I was playing White. I decided to follow the plan of mating Black down the h file by utilising Rf3-h3, it was just a question of how to do it. After considering 6 different moves I decided on 19.Qh6 Now while this looks good, the question I should be asking is "Is it really good?". I guess in a practical sense, if it helps me win the game then it is good, but this may rely on my opponent missing the strongest reply. The game continued 19. ... Qb6 20.Rf3 Again I looked at a couple of alternatives but decided that following my plan was the best. The game rapidly concluded with 20. ... c4+ 21.Bf2 Qxb2 22.Rh3 Ng5 23.Qg7#So a win for me, but on further investigation both myself and my opponent missed a saving line for him, which would have turned a win into an uphill struggle for me. Under those circumstances can such a win be truly satisfying? Or do you happily take the point and use it as a lesson for the next game?

Sunday, 11 May 2008

One of the most interesting places I've visited is Hay-on-Wye, while one of the most interesting people I've met is Boris Spassky.For those that don't know, Hay-on-Wye is a small town in Wales, famous for its second hand book stores. And on the 25th of May, former World Champion Boris Spassky is playing a 20 board simul at the annual Hay Festival. One participant is Welsh Assembly Member Peter Black, who was a a former Welsh League Champion. The mixture of chess and politics is interesting enough for the BBC to do a small story about the meeting, which you can read here.

Saturday, 10 May 2008

The Two Knights Defence is Blacks most combative response to 3.Bc4, although recently Nigel Short suggested that if Black plays 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 he just loses a pawn. Nonetheless in an online Two Knights Thematic I am playing in at the moment, a third of the games have been completed, and Black has won everyone one. There have been a number of different variations investigated, including the Modern, the Bogolyubov, the Fritz-Ulvstead and of course the Wilkes-Barre (which I scored 2/2 as Black).Here is a quick win from the event involving a line in the Fritz variation.

Friday, 9 May 2008

Is it possible to play decent chess after you've had a few drinks? For me, definitely not, but there are plenty of stories of chess masters still effortlessly winning while a little worse for wear. But I think there are just as many stories of alcohol affected players that have ended badly.Nonetheless I once had an opponent who was having such a bad weekend that he decided to sink a few over lunch before the final round commenced. While his game started erratically, he sobered up as the game wore on, and finished his tournament with a win.While reading a copy of The Guardian Weekly on the bus this afternoon, I noticed Leonard Barden made notice of the performance of one the teams in this years Russian Teams Championship. Apparently Tomsk (the defending champions) were fined for a "sports discipline breach". In the old days this was Soviet code for heavy drinking. In his column Barden presented the following game, lost by a Tomsk player, and said "Judge for yourself"

Thursday, 8 May 2008

While the person sitting across the board from you is nominally your opponent, most of the time the person you are really playing against is yourself. This is because when you are trying to calculate a move, you are also trying to find the best moves for your opponent. So when things go horribly wrong it is usually because what you think must happen, turns out not to happen.Here is an example for the ANU Chess Club last night. Adrian de Noskowski won a pawn on move 21 forcing Mario Palma to try and defend the position a pawn down. By move 43 they reached the diagrammed position, when suddenly de Noskowski came up with a plan to mate the White king. Unfortunately the plan had a major flaw, which can happen with both players short of time and only receiving a 10s increment per move.

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

The influx of new (and strong) chess players into Canberra has resulted in a number of new (and bold) ideas. One idea is the revival of interstate team matches, either against teams representing states, or teams representing clubs. Two players who are keen to see this happen are IM David Smerdon, and Endre Ambrus. Both of these players have had plenty of experience in playing in teams events overseas, and both think that it would be great to have it in Australia.One suggested format is a team of 6 match. Each team would be required to have at least 1 male player, 1 female player, and 1 junior player. Teams would play in ratings order, although players could be swapped as long as the difference between the swapped player and the next player on the team wasn't more than 100 rating points. So for example a Canberra/ANU Chess Club team might be 1.IM David Smerdon 2.IM Andras Toth 3. Endre Ambrus 4. Junta Ikeda 5. Gareth Oliver 6.WIM Arianne CaoiliNow for the moment this is still in the discussion/early planning stage, and how the matches would be played is still being thought out. One obvious way is to play the games over the net, but once again do you use real boards and board runners, or does each player have a terminal. But in the discussion on this matter there was a strong opinion that it would be much more enjoyable to play face to face.Either way, if anyone else from outside Canberra is interested in participating in such a match, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Tuesday, 6 May 2008

The first FIDE Grand Prix event ended in a 3 way tie for 1st, between Vugar Gashimov, Yue Wang and Magnus Carlsen. Each score 8/13 with local boy Gashimov edging the other 2 players on tie break. Half a point back were Shakriyar Mamadyrov and Alexander Grischuk.Probably the key game for the tournament was the round 12 clash between Gashimov and Grischuk, which crueled Grischuk's chances for first place and catapulted Gashimov into the lead.

Monday, 5 May 2008

"Miniature" is to kind a description for this game, as White just tears into Black's position. The only slight flaw in the game (if it can be called that), is the Black doesn't allow White the pretty pawn mate on move 15.

Sunday, 4 May 2008

When you are young you tend to overstate your age (especially approaching 18 years old) while when you are older you tend to understate it ("it's the 12 anniversary of my 39th birthday"). Now news from India reveals that people who are older are also understating the age of those who are younger.It seems that 5 players in the Indian Under 9 Girls Championship have been found to be overaged, after medical tests conducted by organisers. Despite the fact that the players parents had presented birth certificates showing they were eligible to play, there were sufficient suspicions to have additional tests carried out.The full story is here in The Hindu.

Saturday, 3 May 2008

For all the sneering that CC receives from some OTB players, a significant amount of opening theory is developed in Correspondence Thematic events. These are events where all the games start with a specific opening, either at an early stage, or in some cases, a theoretically crucial position.However, the most common thematics usually involve openings that are avoided at the top levels of OTB chess, although these openings may still be popular at the club level. Probably the two openings most closely associated with CC Thematics are the Blackmar-Diemar Gambit (BDG) for White, and the Latvian Gambit for Black.Now the BDG is one of those openings where the players who use it are so passionate about it that the wins for white tend to be over publicised, at the expense of the games where Black hangs on to the pawn and frustrates White's attacking plans. So just to redress the balance here is a game where Black launches the big attack, and cleans White's clock in pretty short order.

Friday, 2 May 2008

Jonathan Speelman often bemoans the effect that the 30s increment has on the quality of endgames in modern chess, but imagine the damage that 10s increments cause. As an example, won one of the last games to finish at the ANU Chess Club the other night contained the following sequence of missteps and near misses. I'll leave the players unnamed as it isn't my intention to criticise their play, just to highlight the difficulty in finding the right moves when you only have 10 seconds to do so.

1...Kg7 [ 1...e5+ At the time I thought this was the drawing move, but Black explained after the game that he was still looking to win the position! He also felt that moving the pawn stopped him from playing Rf5+ which he used in the game.As it turns out my instincts were correct as it is the only move that draws (with correct play!). 2.Kg4 e4 3.Kf4 e3 4.Kxe3 Kg7 And Black captures the g and h pawns.] 2.Kg5 Rf8 3.Rh1 Rf5+ 4.Kg4 Rf8 5.Kg3? Now it is White's turn to go wrong, although at 10s a move Black misses the right idea. 5...Kh8? Not only does this miss the draw, it puts the King into a mating net. [ 5...Rh8 draws as the g pawn is indefensible.] 6.Kg4 Re8 7.Kg5 e5 8.Rh5 Re7 9.Kh6 Watching the game I felt that Black seemed surprised to see himself in this position. 9...Re6 10.Rxe5 And once again Black was caught unawares, so much so that he missed the stalemate trick which would have saved half a point, but then again so did White! It seemed only the spectators saw what was up, and to their credit, they managed to keep their 'poker' faces. 10...Rf6 One more square would have done it! [ 10...Rxg6+ 11.Kxg6 ( 11.Kh5 Kxh7 12.Re7+ Rg7) ] 11.Re8+ Rf8 12.Rxf8#

Thursday, 1 May 2008

Zipf's Law is one of those wonderful rules of the universe which describe how things are, rather than why things are. Other examples might be Bode's Law (for the distance of planets) or Vizzini's Classic Blunder ("Never get involved in a land war in Asia").It's major application (these days at least) is in explaining the popularity of competing services. Not the why, but just the fact that twice as many people use Google over Yahoo, or Facebook over Linked-In etcIt may even apply to the shifting sands of the Canberra chess scene. For reasons to do mainly with geography, Canberra has usually had 3 or 4 clubs in operation. Unfortunately, mainly to do with population, these clubs periodically go through periods of boom and bust. In an ideal competitive market, the busts would shake out the under performing clubs, leaving Canberra with one or two constantly successful clubs, rather than 2 successful clubs and 2 struggling clubs.Anyway, the two clubs that are doing well in Canberra at the moment are the Tuggeranong Chess Club, and the ANU Chess Club. Indeed the ANU Chess Club is doing so well that until we get some bigger space, we are turning players away from our tournaments. Which is a little unfortunate, as obviously getting more players into the chess scene is obviously a good thing.Now while the ANU Chess Club members obviously turn up to the club for a reason, I suspect it is more a "crowd attracts a crowd" mentality the motivates new players to change clubs. And while Zipf's Law doesn't explain this, it certainly does measure it.